When you've been running for as long as I have, coming to an abrupt stop often resulted to stumbling forward, the lingering momentum knocking you down to the ground.

It felt that way at first when Brandon walked into my life.

And had he been a different man, I might have just dusted myself off, gotten back up on my feet and resumed running. But Brandon Maxfield—noble, indomitable, passionate—was exactly the kind of man who would catch a lady before she could hit the ground, who would sweep her up in his arms like a precious load.

Maybe I really was a damsel in distress.

Or maybe I was just so damn tired and lonely.

Or maybe, I truly made the one perilous mistake I couldn't afford making—falling in love.

Just as I dreaded, it wasn't a happy condition.

It made me want things I had no business wanting, it made me reckless, it made me helpless with this appalling longing, it pinned me in the one place I should've run from a long time ago.

The morning I left Brandon's house, I should've headed straight out of town, never to look back again.

But that ultimatum clouded over me, keeping me stranded even as the danger grew each day.

I heard nothing about a dead man found in the back alleys—at least none that matched our attacker—that I knew Eddie would soon ferret out Brandon's intriguing presence in my life.

His identity would be his death sentence—just as mine was my own.

I gave myself a few more days but the countdown was almost over.

It wouldn't be pleasant to realize and accept that Brandon had seen the wisdom in keeping himself off the streets and out of my life but it just might allow me to move forward. He wouldn't be mine but he would be safe and maybe that knowledge would be enough to sustain me.

In my mind, in the many years to come, I would only ever remember him as the young, handsome and fiercely tempting man I was both blessed and cursed to have met and let go.

He would never age, much like the face I stared at in the mirror in the poor lighting of the dressing room.

"You're spacing out again, Char," Rita said as she picked up a bottle of cheap perfume from the vanity. "What's going on with you?"

I forced a smile and patted some more rouge on my cheeks.

For tonight's entertainment, the girls and I were going to do our version of the Charleston.

We were all getting ready, clad in stockings and embellished dresses, our hair curled, our faces powdered, our brows penciled on and our dark red lips drawn.

I adored how makeup could transform me and there was a sense of freedom to that. A woman on the run couldn't have a single memorable face.

"I'm trying to remember all the steps," I told Rita. "I don't want my last show to be a disaster."

Rita's face saddened as she looked at me in the mirror. "We really can't stop you, Char?"

I'd given Rosie and the staff my notice end of last week. Each time I had to move on, I tried not to disappear all of a sudden. I made that mistake once. It made people curious and wary and ask too many questions.

"Aunt Wilma really wants me to help her with her pastry shop," I said, the lie I'd repeated to a few people in the saloon sliding out smoothly. "I figured why not? She's family even though we haven't seen each other in years. Besides, I'm ready for a new adventure somewhere else."

Rita's eyes sparkled as she sighed dreamily. "And New York, of all places! I'm so thrilled for you. But I'll miss you, friend."

Rita and I weren't exactly close friends but when we were in the saloon, we looked after each other and tried to have fun doing a job we didn't always enjoy.

I gave her a quick hug before we finished touching up each other's hair.

One of the cleaning boys in the back came up to tell her that one of her admirers just arrived.

I wasn't sure how long I stayed in the dressing room, endlessly gazing at the only face I'd know for the rest of blasted eternity that I was destined to spend alone.

The door creaked open and I rose to say that I was already heading down. When Brandon's tall figure, all clad in black, slipped through the narrow opening with catlike stealth, I froze, my gasp caught in my throat.

"You're just so eager to get yourself killed, aren't you?" I bit out, finally recovering from my shock. Panic was quickly setting in but it warred with the anger rushing through me. "For an intelligent man, you just keep proving what an absolute idiot you—"

The rest of my words were captured along with my mouth when Brandon swooped in for a long, hard kiss. His arms wrapped around my waist, holding me tightly against him that I couldn't tell anymore whose heartbeat pounded over the other.

It was frantic—like the only air we could breath was the one we shared between kisses—and while the world felt like it was at a standstill, we were spinning.

With painful effort, I shoved him away, holding a hand up to stop him from coming after me again. "Don't, please. I'm not made of steel, Brand. Don't make me hurt any worse than I already am."

The look on his face told me I wasn't alone in my suffering.

"That's the last thing I want for you, Char—for us," he said, pulling off his hat and running a shaking hand through his hair. "It's a price I can't pay—no matter how worthy the cause."

I swallowed hard, my heart trying to leap out of my chest. "What are you saying?"

Those beautiful, tender eyes—gold and green and soft in the incandescent light—held a power stronger than my own fate had on me.

"If I'm going to fight for one thing, I'll fight for you," he said with calm conviction. "All I ask is for you to let me finish what I started with The Magnolia. It happens tonight which is why we need to get you out of here right away. And when it's over, I'll walk away for good. I'll come home to you."

It was too much of what I desperately needed, of what I thought I could never have, that I couldn't summon the strength to say no.

"Deal," I said quietly in a voice that slightly shook because I wasn't just saying yes to staying with Brandon. It meant I had to stop running. It meant fully entrusting my heart and my entire anomalous existence to another person.

The relief in his expression was tremendous, the rigid frame of his body loosening as he exhaled a breath. He didn't smile though. He snatched me up in his arms, cupping the side of my face and kissing me softly.

"Thank you for trusting me, Charlotte," he murmured, burying his face in my hair. "I was afraid that I was too late. I came to see you earlier this evening but you were already here. There were two full suitcases by your door. I knew I'd run out of time."

I lifted my head to smile at him. "I will never run out of time, Brand, but an endless supply of it means nothing if I spend it alone, living but never quite alive."

He smiled back, his lips brushing against the tip of my nose. "I won't have the same luxury but whatever time I can have with you is enough for me."

We kissed—sweet, tender and a little breathless this time—before the door was kicked open, a loud clapping filling the room.

A chill went down my spine as Brandon quickly moved me behind him, his large frame fairly blocking me from our intruders.

"A true but tragic tale of love—definitely a classic," Eddie said as he sauntered into the dressing room, flanked by two of his largest thugs, guns on display.

We were cornered.

Doomed.

He dropped his hands and faced us, a sneer on his face, his eyes bright and bloodshot.

"Billionaire vigilante and his flighty little flapper—star-crossed lovers ruthlessly torn apart," he said, flashing us a snide smile. "If that's your kind of romance, I'd be happy to oblige you."

"Leave her out of this," Brandon said in a hard voice that showed no fear. "Your fight is with me."

Eddie didn't seem intimidated. "Mostly but when I'm done with you, I'll have a lesson or two to teach Charlotte myself." The man's face lit up with a cold, cruel smile. "Or maybe I'll play teacher first and you can watch. It's just the kind of thing I want to send to hell with you before I throw you there."

"You'll be there first," Brandon bit out, the right hand he had somewhere between our bodies slyly moving around my thigh. I didn't make a sound when his fingers found the pistol strapped to my leg, his thumb quietly pulling back the hammer.

It happened so fast yet I saw every single thing as if time had slowed.

Brandon whipped my gun out as he shoved his weight back to topple both of us down to the floor, keeping us out of the line of fire. He fired the two shots I had in my double-barreled Derringer, hitting both Eddie and the thug to his right. Eddie had just fired off a shot, clipping Brandon who swung his left arm forward with his own pistol, hitting the second thug.

Eddie, already bleeding and clutching a wound on his right chest, cocked his pistol with a shaky hand and aimed it straight at Brandon.

I moved before I knew exactly what I was doing.

I tumbled forward, throwing my body over Brandon's, shielding him just as liquid fire pierced through me with breathtaking force.

Those green-gold eyes I was mad for were the last thing I saw before my vision went black and I faintly wondered, as I spiralled into oblivion, why such beautiful eyes were glistening with tears.

I could never age but I could certainly die.

Damn.

I might have just done that.

***

I was ablaze.

It reminded me of the many hot, humid summers I spent in Belle Terre, flayed by the sun and burdened with hard, manual labor on the fields. There was no relief until the sun started to descend or when I could escape into the shade near the bayou, cooled slightly by the damp breeze.

The kaleidoscope of memories twisted in my mind, snapshots of the various lives I've lived and the many Charlottes I've become over the decades merging and splintering until I couldn't make sense of them anymore.

I was reliving no memory.

I've never felt this kind of pain before—a sense of being torn asunder and left to bleed dry.

"Rest easy, dearest," a soft female voice gently seeped through the barrage of images and sensations. It sounded familiar and comforting—the same voice I'd fall asleep listening to at night as she told me of fairy tales and happily ever afters. "You'll be alright. You're strong enough for this."

"Mama," I choked, the words tight through what felt like shards of glass in my throat. "I'm not... It hurts... And I'm so tired... So tired."

I couldn't see her face but I swear I could hear her smile. "Living without purpose is a chore, dearest. Choose a life with reason and suddenly life will be too short."

In the cacophony of sounds and the shifting images that danced behind my eyes like sun flares, I heard his panicked voice, calling my name, whispering words of love, begging for me to stay, telling me he'd follow me to hell and back if he had to.

I smiled.

Well, we certainly can't have that.

"I'm choosing you, Brandon," I whispered. "I'm choosing you forever."

***

Neither the most brilliant of science nor the most prolific of philosophy could explain life to its exact detail and I've invested a great fortune in both of them.

The answers either yielded were for mankind to make something of as I didn't require any to explain the greatest mystery of my life. I was simply content to have it and enjoy it while time was still on my side.

"She's very beautiful, isn't she, Ethan?" I asked my six-year-old grandson as I bounced him lightly on my knee, pointing to the portrait on the wall of my study.

The little boy with a full head of gold-streaked brown hair nodded with all seriousness. "She's like an angel."

I smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "She is."

The boy continued to gaze at the painting, his eyes clouding over, his lips pursed in a frown of concentration. "What's on her back, Gwampa?"

My smile widened as I leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "Those were marks of her wings, Ethan."

The boy swiveled his head to me in puzzlement. "After she broke them off?"

"No. Before she grew them," I answered just as the door to my study swung open and my son, Henry, walked in with his arm around his smiling wife, Lillian. They married young, straight after university, but I never fretted over it. They were in love. Most importantly, they were kind to each other. Lillian was always affectionate to her husband and Henry openly adored the shy young lady he'd brought to the altar exactly a year after he'd set his sights on her.

We did well with our boy.

Not only did he look much like his mother with those aquamarine eyes and dark blond hair, he had her resilience too.

He moved his young family to London over five years ago, shortly after the end of the second world war, and focused his time and talent in his diplomatic work there. We kept away from society for obvious reasons and Henry had been busy. This was the first time he'd been back home in a long time and while I wanted to tell him to stay here close to us, I didn't want to get in his way.

I couldn't save the world quite like I'd imagined I would but I, myself, made every effort I could to better it in ways both big and small.

I kept my promise to my wife, and she to me, but nothing stopped us from devoting much of our vast manufacturing resources to the war efforts and the continued industrialization of the country.

It wasn't everything but it was something. It was a price I could pay.

"Daddy!" Ethan said, pointing to the portrait. "Gwampa was telling me about the angel!"

Henry didn't have to glance at the portrait. Instead, he smiled as he walked over to his son. "What's her name, Ethan?"

The boy turned to me with the same question in his eyes.

"Charlotte. Her name's Charlotte."

The voice, clear and summery, came from the door that led to the adjoining conservatory where my wife had been cutting her roses when our guests arrived.

She stood there, a radiant smile on her beautiful face still untouched by time.

"Hello, Mama," Henry said with a grin before he hopped up on his feet to run to her and wrap her in a hug. "It's so good to see you again."

"You too, sweetheart. For a diplomat, you're still a bit of a rascal but I think they like that about you," Charlotte teased as she tucked a lock of Henry's hair behind his ear, much like she did when he had been a young boy. Then she turned to give Lillian a welcoming hug. Whatever Lillian understood of Charlotte's unique situation didn't matter because the young woman adored her. We protected our own.

"And are you this Ethan I've heard about so much?" Charlotte said when she finally walked over to me and our grandson who tipped his head all the way up to look at her.

The boy nodded. "Are you an angel?"

Charlotte met my gaze and we shared a smile as she slowly sank to her knees in front of the little boy, taking his small hand in hers. "Perhaps. But what I'd really, really like is to be your grandmama."

The boy's nose wrinkled. "But you're not old."

There was a scattering of chuckles in the room and I put a hand over Charlotte's one that she'd rested on my other knee.

"But I love you and I think that's the most important thing," she told Ethan patiently before reaching an arm out to him. "Will that be alright?"

The boy didn't even pause.

He nodded and wrapped his chubby arms around Charlotte's neck in a tight hug.

I smiled, my heart swelling with that same kind of happiness that had settled in it almost thirty years ago and never left.

There was a time when I thought it was wrenched from me forever but it was just a distant memory now.

Time would pass for me, for everyone else, and I'd have to kiss her goodbye.

But I wasn't afraid.

Neither was she—at least, not anymore.

Death would be a very brief pause to the eternity I would spend with Charlotte, may it be in this lifetime or the next.

After all, great love stories didn't end with the last page of the book.

They lived on in your heart.